Crash
by author-self-insert
Summary: High school senior, Edward Cullen, finds himself stranded in the Canadian wilderness with his Muslim classmate, Isabella Bahari. Will our heroes learn to see past their prejudices and work together to survive? Of course they will. This is an HEA. Canon couples.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: Meyers owns the characters. I own the rest.**

 _The believers, the Jews, the Christians, and the Sabians—all those who believe in God and the Last Day and do good—will have their rewards with their Lord._ Qu'ran 2:68 trans. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem

Chapter 1

"What the—?" Edward woke with a start, and looked around the tiny plane.

 _Where the fuck was everyone?_

The small, dark space was crammed with suitcases and duffel bags. Edward could hear the loud drone of the engines, and felt his stomach drop as the plane shuddered. _Turbulence_.

Groaning, he remembered.

He'd lost a bet. A stupid coin toss. And as a result, Edward Cullen had been consigned to the tiny cargo plane carrying their luggage. The rest of the senior class was currently enjoying the luxurious (by comparison) accommodations of the passenger airplane meant to carry them on the last leg of their flight to Denali, Alaska, where the class was supposed to spend Spring Break saving the planet.

At least, that's how the student body sold the trip to their parents. Really, it was just an excuse to get as far away from their families as possible.

Unfortunately, there was a mix-up with the airline, and there wasn't enough room for everyone on the passenger plane.

It was a given that Isabella Bahari would end up on the cargo plane.

They didn't even have to ask. She just stood up, duffel bag in hand.

In fact, they _wouldn't_ have asked. They would never have singled out Fork High's sole Muslim student by sending her to the cargo plane.

But Isabella seemed to get off on the idea that she was some sort of pariah. It was like she enjoyed being alone. Like she derived pleasure out of the notion that she was being shunned, when that was only half the truth, because she did a fair amount of shunning herself.

The other seat in the cargo plane would have gone to Tyler Crowley, but for the flip of a coin.

Thus, Edward found himself ensconced in this flying tin-can, the plane rattling and shaking like it was about to break apart any moment.

He had managed to fall asleep only because he was exhausted from the all-nighter he'd pulled the night before. But he still had a headache. And he felt queasy, either from the hangover or the ride, or both.

Edward tried to stretch legs, only to find a duffel bag in his way. Annoyed, he kicked the bag, and was rewarded with the sound of a crack.

Huffing, he scanned the tiny space, and spied his co-passenger, Isabella, sitting in the far corner of the darkened cabin.

"Hey."

She didn't move.

"Hey!" he shouted.

Still nothing.

Edward pushed himself up and staggered across the aisle, but then stopped, catching sight of the girl's headphones.

He didn't know the rules. But he was pretty sure that he wasn't supposed to touch her.

So he just waved a hand in front of her face.

"Hey," he said when she glanced up. "Why aren't we there yet?"

She pulled off the headphones, taking care that her scarf remained in place, but didn't reply.

Edward glanced at his watch. "We should have landed an hour ago."

But Isabella just looked down at her book, like he was wasting her time.

 _Probably wouldn't even care if we crashed_ , Edward thought darkly, not because he associated Muslims with plane crashes—he wasn't that much of a boor—but because he truly detested that Ophelia-girl from Shakespeare's play, and for some reason, Isabella reminded him of her.

Well, Edward wasn't going to stand idly by while some idiot pilot flew them around in circles.

He reached for the ugly green curtain behind the cockpit just as the plane lurched.

Edward stumbled backwards, ripping the curtain as he went, the little hooks snapping one by one.

Trying to brace himself, Edward felt the plane lurch again, and this time he fell forward, right into Isabella's lap.

 _Fan-fucking-tastic_ was his last conscious thought before the burning started.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

At first, Edward's mind refused to accept the reality of what he was feeling.

When that didn't work, he tried to reconcile himself to the sensation. Figure out how to accept the searing agony.

 _"So what're you doing this weekend?" Jessica asked slyly, playing with her ponytail._

 _He smirked at her. "You."_

 _She giggled, but then hesitated._

 _"What's that sound?" she cocked her head to the side, eyeing the door._

 _Edward couldn't hear anything. And the closet was locked. "Who cares?" he whispered._

 _"No, I think someone's screaming."_

And Edward realized that he was the one screaming.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Edward didn't understand how the burning could possibly go on for so long. He tried to wrap his mind around it, as if sheer reason could somehow help him master it.

He remembered his sister telling him about something she'd read, how in hell, the dead never become habituated to the pain. They burn and burn and burn.

Was Edward dead?

He couldn't be, because it still burned.

 _Please God, let me die._

Maybe he _was_ dead, and this wasn't heaven.

But he just a kid. He didn't belong in hell.

 _They were all sitting in class, about to start a test, when they heard the screaming start._

 _Edward was on his feet a second later, but Mike was already running to the door to see what was going on._

 _"Back to your seat, Newton," Banner said._

 _Mike ignored him, and peered out into the hallway, Edward joining him at the window as the screaming rose in pitch._

Shit.

 _There she was._

 _Isabella._

 _She was crouched in the hallway, with her hands over her ears, as though to block out the noise._

 _But she was the one screaming._

 _And screaming._

 _Screaming and screaming and screaming, rocking back and forth, banging her head on the lockers behind her._

 _Edward had never seen anything like it._

Another tongue of flame licked its way up Edward's leg and he gasped, only for his throat to catch fire once more, the taste of cheap liquor filling his mouth right before he passed out again.

 _There was a soldier in the hallway, staring down at Isabella, with an awful expression on his face, like he was staring into the mouth of hell._

 _And yeah, Edward laughed out loud, because he was a dick. Because Isabella was such a bitch, always acting like she was better than everyone else. And for a split second, Edward had let his worst prejudices come out to play._

 _"What the hell's wrong with you?" Mrs. Cope hissed. "Her father's been killed."_

Gradually, Edward returned to his senses.

His throat hurt too much to keep on screaming.

His leg hurt too fucking much for him to pass out again.

And whoever had been pouring the liquor down his throat had obviously decided that he was better off suffering.

 _Fucking bitch._

"You're awake," the bitch said.

It was the first thing anyone had heard out of Isabella Bahari's mouth since her father's death, three months ago.

 **AN: Rating is for language. Not content.**

 **My knowledge of Islam is limited to what I know from Muslim friends and to my minor in Middle Eastern studies. Please let me know if you notice any mistakes.**

 **If your one of the ones who thinks that all Muslims are terrorists, I dare you to read me.**

 **Come on.**

 **I DARE YOU.**

 **To everyone, thanks for reading.**

 **I don't have a very good track record when it comes to posting/finishing stories that aren't prewritten. So I'm not sure what my schedule will be when it comes to updating. But I feel a burning need to publish this now, and it has been sitting on a backburner for a while.**

 **To the one reader who recognized** _ **Corrupting Influence**_ **, this too was previously published, pulled before it was finished, and is being drastically revised for republication.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: Meyers owns the characters. I own the rest.**

" _We believe in what has been given to Moses, Jesus, and the prophets from their Lord. We do not make a distinction between any of them. It is to Him that we devote ourselves."_ Qu'ran 3:74 trans. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem

Chapter 2

Isabella Bahari stopped speaking the day her father died.

Well, she didn't stop speaking _entirely._ She had no choice but to go on speaking to Alice and Jasper, and to the one or two teachers who, for some reason, were wont to hold her after class to inquire into her well-being.

As if they gave a fuck.

Yes, _fuck_ , because Isabella— _Bella_ , to her mother and her father, and Alice and Jasper—had a dirty fucking mouth. At least, that was what her father would've said, if he was still alive. But he wasn't.

Other people tried to get Bella to talk. But it was no good. After a while, Angela and Jacob gave up.

As much as Bella valued their friendship, she knew that they didn't really understand.

And once she came up with The Plan, she knew that they would try to stop her. She had no choice but to pull away.

But her efforts were all for naught, because here she was, in the middle of nowhere.

Alone but for this boy.

"What happened?" the boy croaked.

"We crashed," Bella replied, annoyed, because she'd had already had this conversation with him on at least three occasions, the boy drifting in and out of consciousness several times over the last two days. She'd given him the last of the whiskey, for the pain, and there was nothing left.

"Shit," he cursed.

She tried to think of something to say. She felt as if it was incumbent upon her to make him feel better. To offer some comfort.

But why should it be her responsibility to comfort him? She resented the feeling that she needed to cushion this boy from the truth.

Cullen— _his name was Edward Cullen_ —Cullen had been an awful lot of trouble since the accident.

At first, she thought he was dead.

The plane had lurched to the side, knocking him into her lap, so that she dropped her book.

" _I will grieve, somewhere in this comfortless ruin."_

The last words she'd read. She knew the poem almost by heart. She could've recited the next line from memory—

" _and make a place and my peace with the past."_

Then the plane lurched again, and Cullen fell backwards, hitting his head on a metal bracket.

Everything after that was a blur.

Bella knew that the plane was going down, and panicking, she braced herself, even as she knew that it was a waste of time, because nothing could save her.

 _Nothing?_

She knew that she ought to be praying. But there was a hollow place inside of her where her faith was supposed to be. The void had been growing ever since her father's death.

She opened her mouth to say the words. Nothing came out.

Instead, there was a breathless terror—

And falling—

And then pain, the jolt as the plane hit the ground. The impact sent a shockwave of agony through her body.

But the pain was secondary to her joy.

 _Alive_.

It was a joy she wouldn't have expected.

Then the panic returned, because the plane was out of control.

They weren't stopping. They were careening across—

If Bella could've moved, could've made herself raise her head to peek through the curtain into the cockpit, she would've seen a snowy expanse, with rocky outcroppings and barren stands of coniferous trees. White and gray and green. White and gray and green.

And then they stopped.

The jolt this time was so sudden, so painful, that Bella cried out loud.

Then she was sobbing for breath.

 _Alive_.

 _She was alive._

She was still shaking.

Every part of her still shaking.

But she was alive.

A long, awful stretch of minutes passed, far more than the time it took them to fall out of the sky.

At last, Bella removed her seatbelt and stood, painfully, her body still aching.

She was afraid to check on the boy, afraid to discover that he was dead. Yet she forced herself to do it, and she found that, somehow, miraculously, he was alive. Even so, it was obvious that his leg was broken. The sight of the bone pushing through the skin made Bella gag.

She turned away, sick and frightened and wanting—no _needing_ —someone else to take over. Someone else to step in and say that everything was alright, that it was all over now.

She made her way to the cockpit and pulled back the curtain.

What she saw there drove the air from her lungs again. Otherwise, she would have screamed.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Bella sat cross-legged on the floor of the plane beside the newly conscious Cullen. She had constructed a makeshift bed for him down the center of the plane, propping his leg up on several duffel bags.

The leg—she had done her best to brace it. She had put the job off for a while, thinking that at any moment they would be rescued. She thought that she might do more harm than good if she tried to do anything, especially since the bleeding had stopped.

Of course, if no one came, or if it took them too long—

Bella knew that she would have to do something about the leg.

She _hated_ it. It sickened her.

She was not born to be a caretaker. She was not a nurturer.

That was all too obvious when her mother fell ill. Bella knew—abstractly—that she was supposed to _want_ to take care of her mother. But it was just too scary and too—

Too much.

Bella was six years old when her mother died of breast cancer.

After that, her father sent her to live with a retired Army buddy of his, Jasper, and Jasper's wife Alice.

Jasper and Alice cared for Bella like she was their own daughter. Which was part of the problem, because she _wasn't_ their daughter.

"You don't have to wear a scarf," Alice said, arguing with her, yet again.

"I know," Bella said. "I _choose_ to."

"But," Alice shook her head. "Muslim women don't do that in America."

"Some do," Bella replied. "And it's my _choice_."

It was obvious that Alice didn't understand. It was particularly infuriating because Alice claimed to be such a feminist. Yet here she was, dictating a young woman's choices.

"In some countries, you wouldn't have the choice," Alice continued. "And the women there are fighting so hard for their rights. You're just throwing your freedom away."

"If I'm really free, I should be able to choose this."

"Your mother was Catholic," Alice said, as if Bella could've possibly forgotten. "It's the mother's religion—."

"Some Catholics cover their hair," Bella interrupted. "In Europe."

It wasn't as if Alice was even Catholic. They never went to church.

"Your father doesn't care."

It was true. Bella's father, who—at the time of this argument—had two years left on his current tour, didn't care if Bella wore a hijab. He said that she should do whatever she wanted.

"This isn't about him," Bella insisted.

"It's not the Dark Ages," Alice snapped.

And at that point, Bella put on her headphones, done with the conversation, because if Alice wasn't going to listen to her, what was the point?

That night, Bella overheard Alice complaining to Jasper. "How could Bella be so brainwashed?" Alice asked. "How could something like that happen in our house?"

Bella felt a surge of anger at Alice's words. She felt betrayed.

"She's a teenager," Jasper said. "She's just trying to figure out her way."

"By letting men control her body?"

And if Bella had any lingering doubts about her decision, they fell to the wayside then, because Alice was wrong.

Wearing a hijab meant that _Bella_ was the one in control of her body. The one who controlled who saw what. A hijab meant privacy.

And not just so that her body could be given to some man, like he won a prize. _Fuck that._

Preserved for _her_ use. Her choices.

"She's going to be picked on," Alice added.

 _Fine_ , Bella thought. _Let them._

A not so tiny part of her even relished the thought.

It would've been blasphemous to admit it, perhaps, but her decision was driven to some extent by the fact that so many of her classmates would be outraged by the sight of her in a hijab.

 _Fuck them._

And as for religious tenets, well—

" _The work of forming my heart's laws is not the affair of parochial, blind governors._ "

It was no one's business anyhow. It was no one's business but hers.

Just like it was no one else's business why, to everyone's surprise, Bella had decided to join her classmates on the spring break trip. Alice and Jasper were even happy to see her go. They thought it was a sign that she was getting better. They didn't know about The Plan.

But now, she was stuck here, in the middle of nowhere, with this boy— _Cullen_ —to care for.

It was a weight upon her, this need to care for him. It wasn't what she'd come here to do.

But what choice did she have?

"How long?" he asked, his meaning obvious.

"Two days," she said, pulling a duffel bag into her lap and unzipping a side pocket.

"What? But—" Cullen sputtered, clearly struggling with the enormity of just how fucked the two teenagers actually were.

Bella, having already accepted this fact, ignored him, and unzipped another pocket, and found a packet of cigarettes.

She had been thoroughly disappointed by the contents of the bags she'd inspected. Where were the granola bars? The first aid kits? The back-up batteries? The reservation they were supposed to be staying at wasn't exactly the Ritz Carlton.

"How? How could we have been here two days?" Cullen asked. "You're wrong," He struggled to sit up. "They would've found us."

Bella shrugged, unwilling to argue.

Still trying to push himself up, Cullen cried out as his leg shifted. "Will you help me?"

"Why?" She thought that he should just stay where he was. "I'll find you a container." After two days, she knew that he had to be uncomfortable.

"Just help me, please," he pleaded.

He sounded uncertain, as if he was afraid that she would refuse him, and she wanted to, not because she objected to the contact—she wasn't that heartless—but because she knew how painful it would be for him.

Shaking her head, Bella rose to her feet.

And she braced herself so that she could support Cullen's weight. Even so, her knees still buckled under the strain. Gritting his teeth, Cullen heaved himself up with her help.

Then he rocked back and forth on his feet, his arm still around her shoulders.

"Where do you want to go?" she asked.

"Where d'you think?" he replied, breathing hard.

She narrowed her eyes, not caring for his tone, but she helped him lurch his way towards the cockpit.

"I'll talk to that fucker in a second. First I've got to relieve myself," Cullen told her, eyeing the door in the side of the plane.

"You have to go through the windshield."

"What?"

"The door won't open." She realized that she ought to have told him. Saved him the trip. But she had gone for so long without talking. She sometimes forgot that things needed to be said.

Cullen swallowed hard.

"I'll find a container," she said again.

Pale and sweating despite the cold, Cullen closed his eyes. "Okay."

"Do you want me to help you lie back down, or do you want to stay here?"

Cullen glanced back at the "bed" she'd set up for him. "I'll stand."

So Bella helped Cullen brace himself against the wall of the plane, then pushed aside the curtain hiding the cockpit.

"Is a bottle alright?" She paused and looked at Cullen over her shoulder.

"Yeah."

Rummaging under the seat, she pulled out an empty container of whiskey.

He was laughing under his breath as he took it from her.

"You okay?" Bella asked warily. A broken leg was bad enough. If he was cracking up, she didn't know how she was going to handle it.

"Am I okay? Am I okay?" he cackled. "I'm fucking perfect."

Bella decided not to argue, and disappeared back through curtain. She scrambled over the controls and took care as she shimmied through the hole in the glass.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"Where the fuck is the pilot?" Cullen asked when Bella returned. He was sagging against a stack of suitcases.

"In the snow," Bella answered, not wanting to talk about it.

"In the snow where?"

"You know, out there." She made a vague gesture.

"What's he doing out there?"

"Nothing." She glanced up at Cullen, but didn't meet his eyes. "He's dead."

Cullen seemed to struggle with the information. "How long has he been dead?" he asked at last.

"He died when we crashed." Actually, he had gone through the windshield. Bella had found his body on the nose of the plane, his arms and legs dangling like the boneless limbs of a dirty ragdoll. "I don't think he was wearing his seatbelt."

Cullen shook his head. "Has it really been two days?"

She shrugged again, dropping her eyes. "I'm not the one who's been unconscious."

"Well, have you tried a cell phone? Where's my cell phone?"

Bella dropped a small bag on the stack of suitcases, knowing that he would want to see for himself.

If the situation was reversed, she wouldn't have taken his word for it either.

He dug through the bag until he found his phone, then jabbed at the buttons.

Cursing, he dropped the phone and pulled out another.

He tried the phones one by one.

And of the ones that he could unlock, not one of them had a signal.

"Did you try outside?" he asked.

"I tried outside."

"Well?"

"I tried next to the plane and on the plane. I even climbed a tree." She looked at him. "I walked at least a mile in every direction. It took me all day yesterday in the snow. There isn't any reception. There aren't any roads. There isn't anyone."

"I don't understand! Why haven't they found us? Where the hell's the black box?"

"I don't think planes this small have black boxes."

 **AN:**

" _I will grieve, somewhere in this comfortless ruin, and make a place and my peace with the past."_ Amru al-Qays, translated by Herbert Howarth and Ibrahim Shukrallah

" _The work of forming my heart's laws is not the affair of parochial, blind governors._ " Forugh Farrokhzad, translator unknown

 **Thank you for reading.**

 **I'm not sure about the quality. The barest bones are being shaped into a chapter in the space of a week. I don't like working on such a tight timeframe. I like to have stories completely prewritten, and then revise as I post. Again, though, I am highly motivated not to delay posting this story by so much as a few weeks.**

 **If you're worried about where I'm going with Edward, rest assured that I have no interest in writing some bs reformation story. There will be conflict, because I need it for the story to work, but he's not an Islamophobe. He's got flaws—because he's human—but I'm not going to put you through hell while he dances around basic self-awareness.**

 **If you're worried about where I'm going with Bella, please read below. Contains some spoilers.**

 **What I hope for Bella: That she's complicated and contradictory. She is an American. And, by definition, we are complicated and contradictory. This, in my opinion, is our strength. We are, again by definition, cosmopolitan. Another strength. Yes, a lot of American identity is an over-wash of Anglo-Saxon, Puritan/Christian, capitalistic, modernism. For that very reason, it would be ridiculous to ignore the degree to which Bella has to negotiate around that. The daughter of a Catholic and a Muslim, she is pulled more strongly towards her father's faith, despite living in a predominately Christian environment. Why did I decide to make her mother Catholic? Well, it's obviously easier for me to write (given that I'm not Muslim). I also think that it opens up an opportunity for some interesting conversations about Bella's choices and identity.**

 **Obviously, Bella isn't going to be a perfect incarnation of Muslim identity. She wouldn't/couldn't be, even if she was living in a Muslim setting and was the daughter of two Muslims. No one is that simple. I am sympathetic to concerns that she might be just an American in Muslim garb, a caricature. I'm trying not to let that happen. But how do I identify her as Muslim without resorting to stereotype? Bella should be allowed to identify with various aspects of Muslim culture/identity, but how do I do that without it seeming as if I'm exploiting her and her culture? For instance,** _ **1001 Nights**_ **has become a hallmark of Orientalizing stereotypes in the Western mind. But if we ignore the gender issues (which you've all managed to do with** _ **Twilight,**_ **so I know you can do it),** _ **1001 Nights**_ **is damn good entertainment. Bella has a right to like it. (Yes, at some point, she is going to address the Orientalizing/gender issues surrounding** _ **1001 Nights**_ **.)**

 **I really don't want this story to promote some Orientalizing portrait of the East as the effeminate, sheltered and sheltering maiden, just waiting to give comfort to the Western male. But not for nothing is it speculated that the Middle East was the source of Medieval Western Courtly Romance, and I am HIGHLY TEMPTED to make use of this literature. It doesn't really fit the mood of the story—and yet…the sheer beauty of the two literatures brought together might justify such a narrative, if only to show the benefits of multiculturalism. There is, after all, a pleasure to encounters with the Other. We must take care to avoid exploitation, of course, and it won't be even-sided—I won't lie and pretend it is given the power disparity faced by a Muslim-American speaking in English—but it would be nonsensical to ignore a discussion of the very real delights of immersion in the unfamiliar.**

 **Right now, I'm still struggling with a desire to avoid the generalization that all Muslims are the same versus not wanting to have to pin Bella's ethnic background down to a particular country, especially in light of the way that some Americans are now picking and choosing which nations we're okay with (aka, the "ban"). As of this minute, her father was Iranian, but that might change.**

 **Regardless of her ethnic background, Bella was born on an American military base and is an American citizen. It would be ridiculous for her to feel un-conflicted about this, particularly with everything that's going on in America right now. There were, after all, anti-Muslim marches** **in this country two days ago (they were ostensibly "anti-Sharia marches," but that was just a bs cov** **er for racists who have zero problem with Christian Sharia). I want Bella to speak her mind—to stand up for herself— without her seeming like the stereotype of the "angry Muslim." But this story isn't going to be a case of America-bashing. That being said, I'm not going to pull punches.**

 **Finally, I am aware of the controversy about authors writing characters who are not from the author's own religion/ethnicity/culture/etc. I get why people say you shouldn't do it—because you're liable to fuck it up, or because you're intentions are suspect (are you being exploitative?). I will do my best not to fuck up. And I've chosen to write a Muslim character not because I want to exploit Muslims, but because I'm fucking sick of seeing all of this anti-Muslim propaganda from people who clearly don't know what the fuck they're talking about. Bella's going to have flaws, because humans are flawed. And I want to write a story about a human being—because Muslims are human beings, and I think that a fair number of people in my country have forgotten that.**

 **Above all, I'm trying to be sensitive in my portrayal of Bella. So if you think I fuck up, please let me know.**


	3. Chapter 3

**I have changed Bella's last name. Sorry for any annoyance that this might cause.**

 **Disclaimer: Meyers owns the characters. I own the rest.**

 _There is no compulsion in religion_. Qu'ran 2:257 trans. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem

Chapter 3

Edward fell in love with Isabella at first sight.

They were only four, so perhaps it didn't count. Edward's mother certainly laughed when he told her how he felt about the little girl he had just met at the playground that afternoon.

But a few days later, the way he cried when he realized that Isabella had left town—his whole body shaking with heartbreaking sobs—it was enough for Edward's mother to realize that her son had indeed formed a deep and genuine attachment, far deeper than she would've believed possible for a four year old, especially in such a short space of time.

Isabella and Edward had only known each other for a week.

Isabella and her parents were in town because they were visiting the Hales. Years later, Isabella would remember the trip not because of the little boy she'd met, but because it was the first time she met the man who had saved her father's life. At first, Jasper Hale frightened her, with the scars on his face and the mottled flesh obscuring one eye. But her father had warned her about Jasper's appearance, making sure that she understood that Jasper looked this way because he had risked his life for someone else. Without Jasper's heroism, Isabella's father would be dead.

This in and of itself was a momentous revelation for Isabella—to realize that her own father had once faced Death, with a capital "D."

It was overwhelming for a young girl.

She knew that her father was a soldier. But, to her, this meant practicing "How to March" with other men on a base in North Carolina, a few miles from the apartment where Isabella lived with her parents. There was never any real fighting in North Carolina—Isabella knew because she'd asked her parents and even her father's parents. They all assured her that she was completely safe from the "bad men."

And Isabella took them at their word. Her grandfather, in particular, offered up compelling evidence, telling her how the "bad men" had taken over her father's country.

"We were lucky," her grandfather said, after explaining how he had taken his family to America right before the "bad men" took over. Had they stayed home, bad things probably would have happened to them. But they were in America now. Safe.

Which meant that Isabella was safe too.

But upon meeting Jasper Hale, Isabella realized that this wasn't entirely true. She was confronted with evidence of these "bad men" in Jasper's own riddled flesh. Hand-in-hand with her admiration for her newfound hero, a man so powerful that he had once stepped in to stop Death itself from taking her father away, was another, stranger feeling. A sense of betrayal. It was the first time Isabella had really considered the possibility that her father—and by extension, her mother—might be fallible. Oh sure, her parents disappointed her sometimes, refusing her an extra scoop of ice cream, for example. But this was the first time that she realized that they were fragile, vulnerable to harm. It was hard to forgive them such a lapse.

The devastating nature of all of these revelations was such that Isabella can be forgiven for wasting little time on the young boy she'd met at the playground. She liked him—she remembered that much. They had played on the swings and the slides, and they would run up and down the wooden jungle gym, pretending that it was a pirate ship. She wanted to be captain and, to her surprise, the boy had agreed, saying "Aye, aye Captain," whenever she told him to do something, like swab the decks or make the second mate walk the plank. This meant a great deal to her at the time. It was hard to get the boys back home to let girls be captains.

Preoccupied though Isabella was with all of her newfound knowledge about her parents upon her return to North Carolina, she nevertheless wanted Edward to know how much she had valued his friendship. She drew a picture of the jungle gym and had her mother mail it to Alice to pass on to Edward.

He hung the picture on his bedroom wall. And not wanting to be outdone, he drew an actual pirate ship, which Alice kindly forwarded on to Isabella.

Edward's picture was received with great excitement. Isabella felt so very important to be the recipient of a real letter. But she and her parents were in the midst of relocating. Her father had been reassigned. The "letter" that Isabella meant to send back to Edward was lost in the confusion of the move.

When, a year later, the Baharis once again descended upon the Hales for a brief stay, Isabella was weary of returning to the playground. She was afraid to face Edward after having ignored him for so long. She thought that he would be angry.

She need not have worried. She was met by an ecstatic Edward, who—far from bearing a grudge—threw his arms around her for an enthusiastic hug.

This time, they planned ahead, agreeing to correspond through the mail and convincing their parents to let them share an occasional phone call.

Unfortunately, a new obstacle was thrown in their path.

Isabella was leaving the country. It was only for a few months, but it disrupted the children's communication.

Not that this communication would've continued even if Isabella had remained in the country. They _were_ children, after all.

But Edward was distraught. It was bad enough that Isabella had to keep returning to the other side of the country. Now she was going the other side of the world.

Edward felt terribly alone and terribly small, realizing that Isabella was going to see so many new, exciting things, while he was stuck in the same town, doing the same things. He was afraid that Isabella was going to think that he was boring.

And he was right. Or so it seemed.

That year, when the Baharis visited the Hales—this time without Isabella's father, who was stationed overseas—Isabella was different.

Edward couldn't exactly put his finger on what had changed. And not knowing how else to put it, he decided that she had become mean.

Just that— _mean_.

His friend was gone, and in her place, there was a new, mean girl, who didn't like to play with him as much as Isabella used to.

In Edward's defense, Isabella _was_ more aloof. She was quieter. She _had_ changed.

She was too young to understand the nature of this change or really to recognize it in herself. In fact, as far as she was concerned, it was everyone and everything else that was changing. Isabella was just trying to keep up.

"No," she said to Edward. "You can't."

She shook her head at him.

"Why not?" He wasn't sure that he liked this new game she was playing. He had come over to the Hale's house with the hope of enticing Isabella to a rousing game of hide-and-seek. He had found her in her room with her face pressed into the carpet and thought that she was looking for something. But when he bent over to help her look, she told him to stop.

" _I_ have to pray. It's what I have to do. But you're a Christian."

"A Christian?" Edward wrinkled his brow. He vaguely understood that he was, as she said, Christian. His mother took him to church a few times a year. And when Edward asked why his father never joined them, his father laughed and said he wasn't a Christian. So Edward knew that going to church meant that you were a Christian, and not going meant that you weren't. But Edward didn't think it was a big deal. And he could see why people wouldn't like going to church. It was boring.

"I pray in church," Edward said. "And sometimes at night, too."

He was lying about that last part. Edward had heard some kids talking about praying before bedtime, so he had asked his parents about it.

"It's a waste of time" his father said.

His mother huffed at that, and told Edward to do whatever he wanted.

But when he found out just how the other kids went about praying at bedtime—with that one strange line, "If I die before I wake"—a shudder ran right down Edward's spine. There was no way that he was going to say _that_ before bedtime.

Nevertheless, he _could_ pray. He knew how. So if Isabella wanted to pray, then he didn't see why they couldn't pray together.

"We're different," she said. "That's all."

But he _didn't_ see, and he _didn't_ like it.

It was just another way in which Isabella had changed.

"If you don't want to play together, we don't have to," he told her. He didn't mean it. He was only putting it out there so that she would have a chance to disagree. He needed her to tell him that he was being silly. Needed her to say that she wanted nothing more than to play with him.

"Fine," Isabella said. "We won't play then."

And Edward's heart broke.

Isabella didn't realize the full import of her actions. She was just doing the same thing to Edward that her cousins had done to her mother, only a few months earlier.

Isabella remembered her cousin questioning her mother. "Why were you praying?" her cousin wanted to know, in that pretty lilting accent. "You don't have to, you know," she said, sniffing at the rice Isabella's mother had made, as if there might be something wrong with it.

"I wanted to," Isabella's mother explained.

"You're Christian," the cousin said, as if that settled it.

"She can do what she wants," Isabella's grandmother snapped. "Who are you to judge her?"

That shut the cousin up, but the exchange left Isabella confused. Everything was just so confusing and new here.

At first, Isabella had been so excited about the trip. She wanted to see the country where her father had grown up.

But then she realized that her father wasn't going to be coming with them. Isabella and her mother would be travelling with her father's parents, but without her father.

"We'll be very close to your father's station," Isabella's mother explained.

Isabella didn't see why they couldn't stay _with_ her father.

"It's not safe," her mother said.

If it wasn't safe for Isabella, then that meant it wasn't safe for her father.

He insisted that he would be alright, but Isabella still didn't like it.

She was also confused by her father's reaction to the news that she and her mother would be travelling with his parents.

"They're crazy," he said, meaning his parents.

Isabella thought that was a little silly. Her grandparents were funny, but they weren't crazy.

But then she realized that he was upset because of _where_ they were going, not because his parents were going along.

"If you're bored while I'm gone, you can just go to Disney Land," he said.

Isabella liked the idea of going to Disney Land, but Isabella's mother wouldn't hear of it.

"You worry too much," she said. "Besides, Isabella deserves to see where you're from."

Isabella wondered about that. And she remembered her grandfather's stories about the "bad men" who'd taken over her father's country.

"Things aren't like that anymore," her mother told her. "Don't worry. Besides, your father's parents will make sure we're alright."

And Isabella couldn't help noticing how excited her grandparents were to be returning home. They kept telling Isabella about all of the things they wanted to show her. The things they wanted her to taste. Things that you couldn't get in America.

So Isabella's father left for his tour of duty—which to Isabella always sounded so exciting, she wanted to go on _tours_ too—and a few weeks later Isabella and her mother met up with her grandparents in New York, and they flew to the other side of the world.

Isabella was overwhelmed by how different everything was. The colors. The light. The heat. The smells. The language.

It was like being transported to a fairy kingdom.

But not everyone was nice. Some of her cousins were mean.

"Has she converted?" her cousin asked, gesturing at Isabella's mother. "Is she raising her daughter as a Christian?"

Isabella knew that last part was referring to her, but she didn't know what it meant. So later, she asked her mother about it.

Her mother sighed. "Life's not black-and-white. It doesn't have to be either-or. That's hard for some people. But that's because they make it hard. If you're kind, if you love other people, it's the easiest thing in the world."

Isabella didn't know what that meant.

Her mother looked at her. "Did you know I went to Kyoto once?"

Isabella shook her head, not knowing what a Kyoto was. She knew her mother had travelled a great deal, though, before meeting her father.

"It was before you were born. I stopped at a roadside shrine and burned some incense. I remember the sound of the raindrops dripping from the eaves. Was that wrong? Did the raindrops care? Was the forest thinking I didn't belong? A few months later, I was in Birmingham, Alabama, walking down the street and I could hear the singing coming out of a church. It was so beautiful. I walked inside and the music was echoing around the rafters. I picked up a hymnal and joined in. Do you think God cared? Do you think he said 'Who is this woman and what is she doing here?' So now we're here. And yes, I prayed with you and your cousins. Do you think God—whatever you call Him—is angry? How could He be? When you go somewhere, you have to give yourself to the experience. Otherwise why are you there? I go to a place because I want to learn what it is, to soak it up. To _be_ of it. You can't hold yourself aloof. You can't be miserly. You can't pick and choose."

Years later, after her mother's death, Isabella would look at pictures, recalling her mother's grace, her mother's natural ease, both traits evident in photo after photo, no matter the setting. In a baseball cap in the jungle with a steppe pyramid behind her, in a sundress in a cornfield with a picnic basket in her hands, clasping a paper bag of groceries to her chest in a fur-lined coat in the middle of a European square. Her mother was smiling, always smiling, always fitting in wherever she went, as if it really was that easy, as if she could just change her skin.

Isabella wished it was that simple for her.

At the same time, she knew that her mother was naïve. Because it _wasn't_ that simple. There was a difference between, on the one hand, being respectful, and, on the other hand, acting like devotion was a feature on a guided tour. Zip line in the morning and temple in the afternoon.

Isabella's cousins had a right to be angry, because who was her mother, coming in like that? Pretending to be one of them? Like she fit in?

And as far as her cousins were concerned, Isabella's mother was an impediment to her husband's faith. Isabella had let it slip that her father only prayed when his parents were visiting.

"Don't listen to them," Isabella's grandmother told her, pulling her out of the room. "Your father is fine, just the way he is."

"But why are they so mad?" Isabella didn't understand what her cousins were saying—going back and forth in that pretty lilting language of theirs—but it was clear that they were upset.

"They don't know what it's like to be the only one who's different. Your father is all alone. He's doing the best he can."

Isabella didn't like the sound of that. It had never occurred to her that her father might be lonely.

She knew it wasn't her mother's fault. Her mother would've supported Isabella's father in anything. But Isabella's mother _was_ different.

Later, Isabella's cousins told Isabella that that she could be different, like her mother, or she could be like them, like her father. Either way, she had to choose.

Isabella didn't know what to believe. She didn't want her father to feel lonely though.

When Isabella and her mother finally came back to America, Isabella's grandparents stayed behind. And as much as Isabella would miss her grandparents, she was especially worried about her father, who would have no one to pray with now.

Deciding that she would take on the task, Isabella realized that it was going to take practice. She wanted to be able to do it perfectly when her father came back from his tour.

So Isabella didn't mean to hurt Edward. She was confused and lonely and missing her father.

A year later, Isabella's mother died and Isabella was sent to live with the Hales.

Edward's mother sat him down and explained the situation. He was supposed to be nice to Isabella and to play with her.

He tried to explain that Isabella didn't want to be friends anymore, but his mother told him that he had to give it another try.

So he did.

But he was right. Isabella didn't want a friend. Not then. What she wanted a mother who was no longer alive and a father who had sent her away because he couldn't bear to face her after his wife's death.

Edward's attempts at friendship were rebuffed.

Over the years, Isabella and Edward grew further and further apart. To Edward, it seemed like Isabella was always going out of her way to be contrary, And not just with him. In school, she would pick the most extreme side in any debate.

Like when they were in the sixth grade, she told everyone that Lincoln was a racist, not a hero. That he only freed the slaves to win a war.

This went against so much of what so many of her classmates held to be sacred truths that the ensuing argument was both heated and loud. Honor was offended. Morality was impugned. And enduring enmities were forged.

Suffice it to say that Isabella could always be counted on by teachers hoping to "debate the issues."

Edward didn't always agree with the things that Isabella said in class, but her contrariness didn't necessarily put him off. No, the real problem was the way that she always seemed to assume that he wasn't on her side. It was the way that she treated him, like he was the enemy. _Stereotyping_ him, the same way that she accused other people of stereotyping the rest of the world. She was a hypocrite, plain and simple. Because she didn't know anything about him.

"You can start the poster this weekend," Isabella said. "Since you like drawing so much. And I'll start the report." They were sitting in the library their junior year of high school, trying to get a head start on a Biology project due in two weeks.

Edward was trying to figure out how the hell they'd gotten stuck working together in the first place. They didn't even sit next to each other in Biology.

But if they had to work together, he thought that they should at least try to keep it a joint effort. "You can come to my place," he said. "We can work on it together."

She glanced at him warily. "Or we can save time and do it separately."

He shook his head, muttering under his breath, because why the hell had he even bothered to try?

"What was that?" she asked.

"Why're you so unfriendly?" he couldn't help asking.

" _I'_ m unfriendly?" she asked in a disbelieving tone.

"You're such a snob."

" _I_ 'm a snob?"

It annoyed him, the way she kept repeating everything he said. "You think you're better than everyone else."

Her eyes narrowed. "A bunch of dumb hicks—"

"See," he crossed his arms. "Right there. You think you're better than us."

" _Us_? So I'm not one of you."

Edward opened his mouth and closed it. "I just meant that you weren't born in Forks. You think you're better than us because you've seen the world."

Isabella laughed. "I haven't seen _the_ _world_."

"Whatever. You've been to places. Most of the people here were born here and they'll die here, working the same crappy jobs their parents had. And that's if we're lucky and the paper mill doesn't close down for good."

"Please, your father's a doctor."

"And he's getting a fraction of what he could make in the city."

"Now who's the snob?"

"But I don't act like one," Edward said. "I don't act like I'm better than other people."

"And _I_ do?"

"It's like you go out of your way to be different."

Isabella narrowed her eyes at him.

"I don't mean the scarf," he said, even though that wasn't entirely true. "It's everything."

"My parents don't work at the mill, and my daddy's not the town doctor. I was never going to fit in, no matter what."

"You don't even try."

"Why should I?"

Edward blinked. It had never occurred to him that a person wouldn't try to fit in. It just seemed so self-evident that a person would want to at least give it a shot. The human species was a herd animal. "We're not that bad, you know."

"Yeah, Mike Newton's a fine upstanding young man."

Edward scowled. "Not everyone's like Newton."

"He's your best friend."

"We're _not_ best friends." Edward resented the implication.

"Could've fooled me."

"In a town this size, it's best not to make enemies."

Isabella raised an eyebrow, obviously not giving a fuck about considerations like that.

"You and I used to be friends," he reminded her. "And I'm _not_ like everyone else. I've read _The Autobiography of Malcolm X._ "

Her eyes widened. "What?"

He nodded, even though—now that he'd said it out loud—he was starting to realize just how fucking dumb that had sounded.

"You've read a _book_?" Isabella asked. "A _book_? And now you're _woke_?"

Edward shrugged.

Isabella pursed her lips, like she wanted to say more, but she let it drop.

They ended up doing the project separately, the way she wanted, and they both got an A, because they always got A's.

But Edward couldn't help feeling a little resentful. He had _tried_. He had extended an olive branch to Isabella, _again,_ and she'd thrown it in his face.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Even though Edward's leg was throbbing, and his head was aching, he had the presence of mind to know that a downed plane in the middle of nowhere was pretty high up there on the scale of _You're absolutely fucked_.

Yet Isabella sounded so calm. How could she possibly sound so calm right now?

For a minute, Edward wondered if he was losing his mind. _If he_ had _lost his mind._ It was just so fucking surreal. Because, as fucked up as things were, Isabella seemed perfectly at peace with it. Like she'd _accepted_ it.

Which made no sense at all.

And he couldn't help laughing when she handed him the empty liquor bottle to piss in. Because _of course_. Of course the pilot was drunk. Of course that was why they'd crashed.

It was so fucking unfair.

Edward was back in the makeshift bed that Isabella had made for him, trying to get comfortable, which was impossible because his leg hurt so much that he could hardly see straight. And he was nauseated, either because of the pain or because he hadn't eaten or because she'd been pouring liquor down his throat for the last two days.

Which was pretty stupid of her, come to think of it. Hadn't she been paying attention in Health? You weren't supposed to drink liquor after being hit on the head. Edward could've died.

But he was alive. He was alive and he felt like shit and he didn't know what the fuck they were going to do.

"What the fuck are we going to do?" he asked her.

Isabella was going through one of the duffel bags, sorting the contents on the floor in front of her. Toiletries, mp3 players and headphones, notebooks and pens, clothes, and miscellanea.

"You can't walk on your leg," she said.

As if Edward didn't know that already. "It doesn't matter. They should still know where we are. They've got radar and shit. They knew where we were going."

"I think we must have gone off course. Otherwise they would've found us by now."

Edward struggled to think rationally around the pounding in his leg. "They're probably just having trouble getting to us. You said there were no roads."

"They could fly."

"Maybe not. Maybe there's bad weather."

Isabella paused. "It's been clear so far. There's still snow on the ground, but the weather's fine."

"Do you even _want_ us to be rescued?" Edward snapped.

"Of course I do," she said, glaring at him.

"You don't sound like it!"

"I'm just answering your questions."

"We're going to starve! And you're just sitting there like nothing's wrong!"

Isabella rolled her eyes. "You're not going to starve." Turning around, she rooted around in the pile of duffel bags, and pulled out several cans of soup and a couple of granola bars. "Here," she said, offering them to Edward. "You can have your pick."

He wasn't very impressed by the array of options, but he selected a granola bar, figuring it would be easy to stomach. "So," he said as he began pulling off the wrapper. "Is there any more liquor?"

By way of an answer, she handed him a bottle of over-the-counter pain reliever.

"Are you kidding me?" he asked, bewildered. "My leg is _broken_." At least, he was pretty sure that his leg was broken. He couldn't bring himself to examine it too closely. A shot of pain took his breath away whenever he ventured to tug at the cuff of his jeans. And he was too much of a fucking coward to fiddle with the brace.

Of course, the injury meant that Edward could probably kiss his baseball scholarship goodbye. It was only worth a few thousand dollars, but he had been so proud to earn it, knowing that he wouldn't be totally relying on his parents for school.

"Don't ignore me," he said, hating the way he sounded, so pathetic, pleading for Isabella's attention.

"I'm not ignoring you," she lied, pulling down another duffel bag.

"My leg _hurts_ ," Edward said, stupidly.

"So take the pills."

Edward opened his mouth to argue some more, but he realized that there was no point.

So, swallowing four aspirin— _recommended dosage my ass_ —he grimaced at the taste, and settled back in his lumpy, cold bed.

For the rest of the afternoon, Edward concentrated on not vomiting, trying to come to grips with just how much his leg hurt, and doing his best to stave off the churning despair that threatened to descend over him.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

The first day Isabella came to school wearing a scarf, Edward didn't even really notice. If anything, he just figured that she was cold.

But she didn't take it off.

And she did the same thing the next day. And the next.

Then he heard about what happened with Mike Newton.

Mike was always such an ass, it was a given that _he_ would be the one to say something stupid, but at least it was out in the open now. Everyone knew why Isabella was wearing the scarf, even if they didn't understand why.

Oh, they understood that Isabella was a Muslim, and that this was her saying it loud and clear. But they didn't quite get why she had to do it like this.

"It's like she's purposely shoving it in our faces," Jessica complained one day at lunch. "Like, do we shove crucifixes in her face?"

"She's just trying to start a fight," Mike concluded, his tone equal parts vindictive and triumphant because, being a frequent instigator of fights with this young woman, he knew of that which he spoke.

"Do you know what they do to women in her country?" Lauren asked.

"You mean America?" Edward replied.

The whole table looked at him.

"She was born on an American military base. She's an American."

"If she's an American, what's she doing dressing like that?" Jessica asked.

"You have a pink streak in your hair," Edward pointed out.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Jessica snapped.

"It is kind of stupid," Mike laughed.

"It's _fashion_ ," Jessica informed him coolly.

"Isabella's just trying to get attention."

"She's _such_ a drama queen," Jane sighed.

"They don't even let women go outside in _her_ country," Lauren announced.

"What country is that?" Edward asked, bluffing, because even though he didn't remember the name of the country Isabella's father was from, Edward knew enough to realize that generalizing about something like that was pretty fucking dumb.

Lauren rolled her eyes. "Wherever her father's from. You know what I mean."

"Why don't you tell us? What country is he from?"

"I don't know. Egypt or someplace like that. Does it matter?"

"They're not all the same, you know."

"Of _course_ I know that."

Edward snorted.

"Why are you defending her anyhow?" Jessica asked. "Do you like the idea of women staying home and doing whatever men say?"

"I didn't say that," Edward backpedalled, sensing that he'd painted himself into a corner.

"Women aren't even allowed to speak their minds in those countries," Lauren said.

Newton laughed again. "Maybe it's not so bad there after all."

Jessica smacked his shoulder, but he just laughed harder.

"The _point_ is, women should be allowed to do whatever they want," Lauren said, continuing her argument with Edward. "Not that I'd expect a _guy_ to understand something like that."

Jessica and the other ladies at the table nodded in agreement, apparently all of one mind when it came to the subject of Edward Cullen, Oppressor of Womankind.

"Whatever," he said, and shoved some French fries into his mouth.

 _What was he doing fighting Isabella's battles anyhow?_ It wasn't like she'd care.

And, to be honest, Edward agreed with Lauren about the scarf. He didn't get it.

Isabella had waged so many arguments on behalf of feminism, telling more than one English teacher that she thought they should be reading more female authors and complaining to one history teacher after another about the fact that they were studying _his_ tory instead of _her_ story. There was no doubt that Isabella was a feminist. So Edward didn't understand why she'd want to wear a scarf.

It was a puzzle.

Sometimes he'd sit in class and stare at her, without even really thinking about it.

He would stare at her, wondering about the scarf and wondering if she really believed all of the things she said in class, or if she was just playing devil's advocate.

And he would wonder why she disliked him so much.

He would wonder what it was she liked about Angela and Jacob, her only two friends. _What made them so damn special?_

Part of him wished that she knew that he had defended her about the scarf, and that he'd defended her on other occasions. Because he wasn't the bad guy. If she'd just give him a chance.

But she never would.

It was like she had a chip on her shoulder.

A week before Isabella's father died, Edward was sitting in English class, staring at Isabella, yet again, this time wondering if it was true that she was the one who got Malloy busted for dealing pills. Deputy Hale was the arresting officer, but it wasn't like it was a big secret that Malloy—

Isabella's scarf was wrapped perfectly around her face, such a snug fit, so snug that her cheekbones stood out against the planes of the fabric, and the black tone made her light olive skin glow.

"What're you looking at?" she snapped at him.

Edward blinked, taken aback, because he had spaced out staring at her.

And he knew that he was the one at fault here. He knew that it was weird to just stare at someone.

But she didn't have to be so mean.

"Nothing." He shrugged. "I wasn't doing anything."

"Good," she said, turning her back on him again.

She was always such a bitch. _Why was she always such a bitch?_

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Eventually, Edward's headache went away, along with the nausea. And despair gave way to a quiet desperation, which gave way to a nihilistic who-gives-a-fuck-anyway apathy. Which gave way to a realization that it wouldn't matter if they weren't rescued because dead people don't care about anything.

Somehow, in Edward's mind, this meant that they would _have_ to be rescued, because he still cared.

And since they were going to be rescued, there was no point in worrying about it.

Which meant that Edward was free to focus on how much his leg hurt.

It really hurt.

And when Edward wasn't thinking about how much his leg hurt, he was thinking about how fucking, fucking cold it was. The extra coats that Isabella had been piling on top of him were only enough to keep the worst of the shivering at bay. And the shivering just made his leg hurt worst.

Between his leg and the cold, it was, all in all, a pretty fucking horrible afternoon. But just when Edward was about to ask Isabella if she would be so kind as to knock him unconscious— _fuck the danger of repeat concussions_ —he suddenly found her looming over him.

"What now?" he asked.

"It's getting dark."

"So?" He didn't like the way that she was looking at him, like she was about to do something that she really didn't want to do. "My leg's fine," he said, holding up a hand as though to defend himself.

"Relax," she said, sounding annoyed.

"What're you doing?"

"What do you think?

"I don't—"

"You will keep your hands to yourself," she warned him, her tone oddly prim as she shifted next to him, lying down on the improvised bed. At least she was considerate enough to avoid jostling his leg as she rearranged the coats.

"What?"

"It's going to get colder. _A lot_ colder."

 **AN:**

 **I don't like this chapter. It seems clunky. But I am posting because I feel bad about the delay.**

 **I am hammering out the details with regard to this story and doing some research. I think that I have the basics figured out, so there shouldn't be any more significant problems (like name changes).**

 **Again, this story isn't about pretending that a multicultural society is easy or ignoring the complications. It's about recognizing those complications, discussing how we might manage them, and demonstrating that the benefits outweigh the costs.**

 **Isabella's tendency to start shit stems from an amalgam of my own experiences and my observation of my first and second generation immigrant friends, many of whom are also shit-starters in their own ways. As I think I've mentioned in other stories, I was told that I was a snob in high school, which was bullshit because the little cliques in question had made it abundantly clear that my trailer-park-dwelling-self wasn't good enough for them. (Perhaps because I was always telling them that they were wrong about everything, including,** _ **especially,**_ **Lincoln. *shrug*)**

" **I've read** _ **The Autobiography of Malcolm X**_ **" was how boys in my high school proved that they were** _ **woke**_ **, though we didn't call it that, because that wasn't yet a word.**

 **I know that the childhood crush and love/hate theme is played out in** _ **Twilight**_ **fanfiction. I decided to move in this direction because it fixed a problem I was having with Edward's character as I transformed some basic features of this story to fit the new outline. But the clichéd nature of the resulting storyline is somewhat frustrating—and is part of the reason for the delay in posting—especially after the whole "I want to avoid Orientalizing/fetishizing stereotypes" in the last AN. I've decided, however, that dancing around the issue brought up in that AN isn't necessarily the right way to go. An Edward who is already fascinated with Isabella lets me address the push-pull dynamic (the revulsion/fascination) associated with the so-called Other, as described by Edward Said and subaltern theorists. And it would be ridiculous to pretend that a hijab, for instance, doesn't make a young woman the subject of a certain amount of interest, especially in America. On this last point, as I try to flush out the contradiction in the ways in which clothing both conceals** _ **and**_ **suggests, my treatment is going to be more academic than scintillating, but it is still a love story. Nevertheless, the rating on this story is for language, not content. (Translation: This story isn't going anywhere near salacious.) So the bit about "Oh, we need to huddle together because we're cold" will—I hope—skip the clichéd romance territory and help us recognize the fundamental human needs of two people who are relying on each other to survive.**

 **Last Tuesday was World Refugee Day, and to honor the event, my town held a screening of** _ **8 Borders, 8 Days**_ **. This is a documentary about a Syrian woman who fled with her two children from Syria to Germany. What struck me was how relatable this woman was. She was just a single mother trying to figure out what to do. She wasn't perfect. She was human. She just wanted a better life for her kids.** **There's a link on the website for _8 Borders, 8 Days_ if you're interested in hosting a screening. **


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